Epic Stores’ grand sale is affecting its relationship with Publishers

Epic’s recent mega sale event should have been a grand success, paving its path towards publicity among gamers worldwide. Instead, the Epic store is in a very disorganized state with a ton of confusion ensuing among customers.

Epic discounted every game on the storefront. If a game cost more than $15, an automatic discount of $10 was added on top of it. This offered some nice savings on major titles like Borderlands 3 and Detroit: Become Human. Due to a blanket discount being added across all games, it created a few issues. Game developers and publishers were not given an option to opt out of the sale and because of this, they started yanking their games out from the store.

Epic mega sale

Some of the Store’s biggest exclusives were removed due to the publisher not agreeing on the price. These included games like Borderlands 3 and Division 2. Epic also confirmed that the only way to opt out was to remove it temporarily from the store –

“If a developer or publisher chooses to not participate in our sales, we will honor that decision. Paradox Interactive has chosen to not participate in the Epic Mega Sale and the game has been temporarily removed from sale,” Epic Games told Kotaku.

But, what’s even more interesting is that this decrease in the sale price isn’t affecting developers and publishers at all. Epic is offering these discounts out of its own pocket. The press release stated-

“During the Epic Mega Sale, developers and publishers are discounting a ton of great games up to 75% off. Also, for every game purchase over $14.99, Epic Games is providing an additional $10 off to players at no cost to the publisher or developer,”

So then why are publishers pulling out of the store? If these discounts didn’t affect game revenue, the devs shouldn’t really bat an eye.

Even so, Epic should add these basic features to the Store. Opting out of a sale should be an option provided to publishers in order to avoid such confusion the next time. A shopping cart feature would also benefit the Store greatly.